Snitch (12A)

Dwayne Johnson as John Matthews and Jon Bernthal as Daniel James in Snitch

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Just like Man of Steel, there’s an overloaded dynamic in this otherwise restrained thriller.

Construction boss John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) makes a deal with US attorney Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon) to infiltrate a drugs cartel – if she’ll get his son off a mandatory 10-year prison sentence.

As an ‘everyman’ character who clearly thinks he’s ‘The Rock’, Matthews ends up taking some unbelievable risks to satisfy his paternal love.

Directed by stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, Snitch is also a surprisingly thoughtful affair.

Especially as it ends with a sombre note about how “the average sentence for a first time non-violent drug offender... is now longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery and manslaughter”.

While some of the highway scenes of destruction wouldn’t be out of place in Johnson’s other hit Fast & Furious 6, there’s enough to keep him ticking over while he waits for a movie to define his career.

If Snitch is not quite his dramatic equivalent of Sylvester Stallone’s Cop Land (1997), nor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies or The Terminator, by the same token it’s definitely not his Jingle All The Way either.

Johnson’s leading co-star is the Oscar-winning, busy-as-ever Sarandon.

Now 66, she looks impossibly younger than she did 20 years ago in Thelma & Louise.

Though given the way her ‘perfect’ top teeth absolutely do not match the bottom set means there’s an oddly distracting Liquorice Allsorts effect during key lines.

Then there’s Saving Private Ryan star Barry Pepper as Agent Cooper.

He sports the worst beard in a year of Hollywood beards.

Not only is his Johnson-style goatee overgrown, but it’s got long strands of grey candy floss heading below shoulder level. Not nice.